The Soviet leadership, including Second General Secretary Kunaev, were able to convince General Secretary Romanov that the best approach in regard to restoring the cult of Joseph Stalin would be following a middle path, that is, presenting Stalin as a symbol of the unbroken will of the Soviet Union, though it would also be made clear that his rule wasn't without mistakes, presenting his tenure as 70 percent victories and 30 percent mistakes. Stalin reentered the public sphere as a statesman who transformed the USSR from a destroyed country into a true superpower, albeit at the cost of millions of lives. Furthermore, the remaining members of the Old Guard—Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov—were restored as members of the Communist Party after they were expelled by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.
(Foreign Minister Gorbachev greets President Reagan in Geneva)
The Second Geneva Summit of was meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Grigory Romanov. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. In the mid-1980s, both the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in a Cold War struggle, but both nations sought to reduce the total number of nuclear weapons. The Soviets sought to halve the number of nuclear-equipped bombers and missiles, and the U.S. sought to ensure that neither side gained a first-strike advantage, and that the protect rights of defensive systems were not endangered. Diplomats struggled to come up with planned results in advance, with Soviets rejecting the vast majority of the items that U.S. negotiators proposed. The Geneva Summit was planned months in advance, so both superpowers had the opportunity to posture and to stake their positions in the court of public opinion. Reagan's security advisor Robert McFarlane said that the United States was having "real trouble establishing a dialogue" with the Soviets, and announced that the U.S. would be conducting its test of the missile defense system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. The Soviets, in turn, announced a unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear tests and invited the Americans to also cease such testing, a request that was rebuffed.
On November 19, 1985, U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Grigory Romanov met for the second time, in Geneva, to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. The meeting was held at Fleur d'Eau, a villa in Versoix. Romanov later said: "We viewed the Geneva meeting realistically, without grand expectations, yet we hoped to lay the foundations for a serious dialogue in the future." Similar to former president Eisenhower in 1955, Reagan believed that a personal relationship among leaders was the necessary first step to breaking down the barriers of tension that existed between the two countries. Reagan's goal was to convince Romanov that America desired peace above all else. Reagan described his hopes for the summit as a "mission for peace". The first thing Reagan said to Romanov was "The United States and the Soviet Union are the two greatest countries on Earth, the superpowers. They are the only ones who can start World War 3, but also the only two countries that could bring peace to the world". He then emphasized the personal similarities between the two leaders, with both being born in similar "rural hamlets in the middle of their respective countries" and the great responsibilities they held. At one point during the 1985 Geneva Summit, President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Romanvov took a break from negotiations to take a walk. Only their private interpreters were present and for years, the details of what they talked about were kept secret from both the Russian and American public. During a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose and Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz, Romanov revealed that Reagan asked him point-blank if they could set aside their differences in case the world was invaded by aliens.
Their second meeting exceeded their time limit by over a half an hour. A Reagan assistant asked Secretary of State George Shultz whether he should interrupt the meeting to end it by its allotted time. Shultz responded, "If you think so, then you shouldn't have this job." The first day, Grigory Romanov argued that the United States did not trust them and that its ruling class was trying to keep the people uneasy. Ronald Reagan countered that the Soviets had been acting aggressively and suggested the Soviets were overly paranoid about the United States (The Soviets had refused to allow American planes use Soviet airfields in post-World War II Germany). They broke for lunch and Reagan promised Romanov he'd have a chance to rebut. They talked outside for about two hours on the Strategic Defense Initiative, but both stood firm. Romanov accepted Reagan's invitation to the United States in a year, and Reagan was invited to do the same in 1987. On the second day, Reagan went after human rights, saying that he did not want to tell Romanov how to run his country, but that he should ease up on emigration restrictions. Romanov claimed that the Soviets were comparable to the United States and quoted some feminists. The next session started with arguments about the arms race, then went into SDI. They agreed to a joint statement.
(Antonov An - 12 in Moscow Airport)
The 1985 Aeroflot Antonov An-12 shoot down occurred on November 25, 1985, in Angola during the Angolan Civil War. An Aeroflot Antonov An-12BP cargo aircraft operated by the Soviet Air Force flying from Cuito Cuanavale to Luanda was shot down, allegedly by South African Special Forces, and crashed approximately 43 kilometres (27 mi) east of Menongue in Angola's Cuando Cubango province. The incident took place in the aftermath of the Soviet Union-backed People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola's (FAPLA) operation 2 Congresso do Partido conducted against units of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA, which received support from South Africa). The transport was carrying eight crew members, 13 passengers and two tank diesel engines in need of repairs. According to eyewitnesses from the local populace and investigative reports, the aircraft was shot down by a surface-to-air missile (SAM). All people on board the aircraft died in the crash. The aircraft involved in the incident was an Antonov An-12BP, a large Soviet-built four-engine turboprop transport, tail registration SSSR-11747. Officially a civil aircraft, it was part of an air transportation military detachment consisting of several An-12 transports and their crews, under the direct command of the Soviet Chief Military Advisor in Angola. The detachment was part of the 369th Military Transport Aviation Regiment, 7th Military Transport Aviation Division, Military Transport Aviation, based at that time in the city of Jankoi/Dzhankoy, Crimea, Ukrainian SSR. The An-12s were primarily used to support FAPLA and its military operations. All eight crew members and four of the passengers were Soviet nationals. Nine other passengers were Angolans.
According to eyewitness reports and the black box recordings, the An-12BP took off from Cuito Cuanavale at 11:20 am. About 15 minutes into the flight at the altitude of approximately 10,000 feet (3,000 m) the pilot reported an explosion to air traffic control on the aircraft's port side next to the wing and engines. Seconds later the pilot also reported that the transport was experiencing problems with engines three and four and stated his intention to turn towards Menongue airport, located less than 50 kilometres (31 mi) away, for an emergency landing. After the explosion, the cargo of two massive tank engines came loose and shifted, altering the aircraft's center of gravity and causing it to bank to the port side. The black box recordings indicated that the crew tried to level the An-12 and turn it towards Menongue's airport for an emergency landing; however, 47 seconds after the missile detonated, the port wing exploded and separated from the aircraft. The burning aircraft then crashed in a field about 43 kilometres (27 mi) away from Menongue, with the main part of the widespread wreckage landing in close proximity to the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road. The next day, several officers from the Soviet Military Mission in Menongue, accompanied by Cuban and Angolan troops, arrived at the crash site where they found all 21 bodies – the crew of 8 and 13 passengers – at the scene. The human remains were first transported to Menongue for identification and later to Luanda. Coffins containing the remains of the Soviet crew and passengers were then transported to the Soviet Union. Civilians from local villages and members of the local people's defense organization (ODP – Organização de Defesa Popular), who had witnessed the midair explosion and the crash, said they had heard and seen what they believed to be a surface-to-air missile being launched immediately before the accident. They described the sound and fume trails that originated from the ground to the point of impact in midair. The recordings of the An-12BP crew's air traffic conversation with Menongue air-defense radar operators were obtained by Angolan authorities. These were later passed on to Soviet investigators conducting their own probe into the crash. The recordings revealed that the crew had reported a missile explosion on the aircraft's port side. In the Soviet Union a specially designated commission under the direct supervision of the Chief of the Air Military Transportation Command of the Soviet Armed Forces was created to establish the cause of the crash. The commission's examination of parts of the aircraft's fuselage revealed multiple traces of an explosive matter and fragments from the surface-to-air missile.
In his book Journey Without Boundaries, SADF Colonel André Diedericks, a former South African Special Forces officer, claims that he was the person who gave the order to launch the missile that brought down the An-12. During the early summer of 1985 one of the previously captured Strela-l (SA-9) systems, manned and operated by a South African Recce group under the command of then-Captain Diedericks, crossed into the Cuando Cubango province, Angola, and with UNITA's help, protection and escort was secretly deployed around the Menongue area. The main mission of the group was to carry out covert combat operations, code names "Catamaran 1" and "Catamaran 2", with the goal of disrupting air traffic in Cuando Cubango province by shooting down both Cuban and Angolan transports, combat aircraft and gunships with the Strela-l (SA-9). Diedericks' account is reiterated by Koos Stadler, another Reconnaissance Regiment soldier (colloquially known as the "Recces") in his 2015 book, RECCE: Small Team Missions Behind Enemy Lines . In the 12 hours after the crash, the after-midnight news reports issued by the BBC, the Voice of America African Service and UNITA's radio station Galo Negro made almost identical announcements: UNITA was reported as having shot down a Cuban military cargo aircraft with Cuban personnel on board, in the same area that the An-12BP was shot down, using a surface-to-air missile. The next day, on November 26, 1985, UNITA officially claimed responsibility for shooting down the aircraft. However, several months later information obtained through various intelligence sources indicated that the An-12 was brought down by a missile launched from a Soviet-made 9K31 Strela-1, a vehicle-mounted short-range guided surface-to-air missile system. Several Strela-1s had been captured by the South African Defence Force (SADF) during a prior incursion into Angola.
In the aftermath of the crash, on December 5, 1985, a Mil Mi-8 helicopter was shot down. Two Mi-8 crews were tasked to provide close air support to a Cuban-reinforced infantry battalion that had orders to secure the crash area for the arrival of a team to conduct on-site investigation and help remove the wreckage for further investigation. As the battalion approached the area of the crash, it was ambushed by a far superior combined SADF/UNITA force deployed along the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road. A fierce fight ensued, resulting in a high number of dead and wounded from both sides. The two Mi-8s, both manned by Soviet Air Force crews, were called in to provide support for the Cuban battalion. On their arrival they came under heavy anti-aircraft ground fire. One was shot down; it crashed and burst into flames, killing the Soviet crew. There were also two Angolan soldiers from the newly formed 29th Airborne Assault Brigade, manning door-mounted guns on the helicopter, who also died in the crash.
The Rome and Vienna airport attacks were two major terrorist attacks carried out on 27 December 1985. Seven Arab terrorists attacked two airports in Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria, with assault rifles and hand grenades. Nineteen civilians were killed and over a hundred were injured before four of the terrorists were killed by El Al Security personnel and local police, who captured the remaining three. At 08:15 GMT, four Arab gunmen walked to the shared ticket counter for Israel's El Al Airlines and Trans World Airlines at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport outside Rome, Italy, fired assault rifles and threw grenades. They killed 16 and wounded 99, including American diplomat Wes Wessels, before three of the attackers were killed by El Al security, while the remaining one, Mohammed Sharam, was wounded and captured by the Italian police. The dead included General Donato Miranda Acosta, Mexican military attache, and his secretary, Genoveva Jaime Cisneros. Minutes later, at Schwechat Airport (Vienna International Airport) in Vienna, Austria, three terrorists carried out a similar attack. Hand grenades were thrown into crowds of passengers queuing to check in for a flight to Tel Aviv, killing two people instantly and wounding 39 others. A third victim died on 22 January 1986, of hand grenade wounds sustained in the attack. First response came from several Austrian police officers, who opened fire on the terrorists. They were supported by two plainclothes El Al security guards who helped to repel the attackers. Over 200 bullets were fired during the fight. The terrorists seized a Mercedes outside the terminal and fled, with Austrian police and El Al security guards giving chase. They killed one terrorist and captured the other two several miles from the airport after a short car chase and gun battle. In all, the two strikes killed 19, including a child, and wounded around 140. Some contemporary reports claimed the gunmen originally intended to hijack El Al jets at the airports and blow them up over Tel Aviv; others concluded that the attack on waiting passengers was the original plan and that the Frankfurt airport was meant to be hit as well. The attacks came after increased security due to recent hijackings and official Interpol warnings that airports might be targeted by terrorists during the holiday season.
Italian authorities stated that receipts uncovered on the terrorists indicated that they had entered Italy a few weeks earlier and had stayed in hotels near Rome. They all had Moroccan passports. It was also reported that a note in Arabic was found on the body of one of the attackers, addressed to ''Zionists'' and announcing, ''the war has begun.'' The note was reportedly signed, ''the martyrs of Palestine.'' Israeli authorities first blamed the attacks on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), but its leader, Yasser Arafat, denied the accusations and denounced the strikes. The PLO expressed 'indignation at the criminal act'' and asserted that the attacks were coordinated as part of a ''plot against the Palestinian cause'', intending to force Austria and Italy into severing ties with the Palestinians. PLO officials recalled that Arafat had recently pledged that coordinated armed Palestinian resistance would be confined to Israel and the occupied territories. Responsibility for the two attacks was later claimed by the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) in retaliation for Operation Wooden Leg, the Israeli bombing of PLO headquarters in Tunis on 1 October 1985. Libya was accused by the US of funding the terrorists who carried out the attacks; although they denied the charges, they did praise the assaults. According to published reports, sources close to Abu Nidal said Libyan intelligence supplied the weapons and the ANO's head of the Intelligence Directorate's Committee for Special Missions, Dr. Ghassan al-Ali, organized the attacks. Libya denied these charges as well, notwithstanding that it claimed they were "heroic operations carried out by the sons of the martyrs of Sabra and Shatila. Italian secret services blamed Syria and Iran. The surviving terrorist in the Rome airport attack, Syrian national Mahmoud Ibrahim Khaled (Khalid Ibrahim), was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 1988. He was released early on good behavior in June 2010 and was living in Rome in 2011. He was employed, and had a girlfriend. In an interview with Il Messaggero, he condemned terrorism, expressed remorse for the attacks, and said that he prays for God's forgiveness. In 1987, an Austrian court sentenced the two surviving terrorists in the Vienna airport attack to life imprisonment.
(A computer programming classroom in the USSR)
As in the United States,
early computers were intended for scientific and military calculations. Automatic data processing systems made their debut by the mid-1950s with the Minsk and Ural systems, both designed by the Ministry of Radio Technology. The Ministry of Instrument Making also entered the computer field with the ASVT system, which was based on the PDP-8. The Strela computer, commissioned in December 1956, performed calculations for Yuri Gagarin's first crewed spaceflight. The Strela was designed by Special Design Bureau 245 (SKB-245) of the Ministry of Instrument Making. Strela chief designer Y. Y. Bazilevsky received the Hero of Socialist Labor title for his work on the project. Setun, an experimental ternary computer, was designed and manufactured in 1959. The Khrushchev Thaw relaxed ideological limitations, and by 1961 the government encouraged the construction of computer factories. The Mir-1, Mir-2 and Mir-3 computers were produced at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics during the 1960s. Victor Glushkov began his work on OGAS, a real-time, decentralised, hierarchical computer network, in the early 1960s, but the project was never completed. Soviet factories began manufacturing transistor computers during the early years of the decade. At that time, ALGOL was the most common programming language in Soviet computing centers. ALGOL 60 was used with a number of domestic variants, including ALGAMS, MALGOL and Alpha. ALGOL remained the most popular language for university instruction into the 1970s.
The Soviets realized the strategic implications of semiconductors already in the late 1950s, and new facilities were set up to manufacture them in cities like Leningrad and Riga. Soviet scientists took advantage of student exchange agreements with the US to study the technology, attending lectures by pioneers of the field such as William Shockley. The first Soviet integrated circuit was produced in 1962, under the direction of Yuri Osokin. Joel Barr, an American-born Soviet spy who had previously infiltrated US-based technology companies, successfully lobbied Khrushchev to build a new city devoted to the production of semiconductors. The new city was given the name of Zelenograd. As a local semiconductor industry began to develop in the 1960s, Soviet scientists were increasingly ordered to copy Western designs (such as the Texas Instruments SN-51) without any changes. In hindsight, the historian Chris Miller regards the approach as poorly suited to the fast-evolving world of chip manufacturing, which continued to change due to Moore's Law. By the early 1970s, the lack of common standards in peripherals and digital capacity led to a significant technological lag behind Western producers. Hardware limitations forced Soviet programmers to write programs in machine code until the early 1970s. Users were expected to maintain and repair their own hardware; local modifications made it difficult (or impossible) to share software, even between similar machines.
According to the Ninth five-year plan (1971–1975), Soviet computer production would increase by 2.6 times to a total installed base of 25,000 by 1975, implying about 7,000 computers in use as of 1971. The plan discussed producing in larger quantities the integrated circuit-based Ryad, but BESM remained the most common model, with ASVT still rare. Rejecting Stalin's opinion, the plan foresaw using computers for national purposes such as widespread industrial automation, econometrics, and a statewide central planning network. Some experts such as Barry Boehm of RAND and Victor Zorza thought that Soviet technology could catch up to the West with intensive effort like the Soviet space program, but others such as Marshall Goldman believed that such was unlikely without capitalist competition and user feedback, and failures of achieving previous plans' goals. The government decided to end original development in the industry, encouraging the pirating of Western systems. An alternative option, a partnership with the Britain-based International Computers Limited, was considered but ultimately rejected. The ES EVM mainframe, launched in 1971, was based on the IBM/360 system. The copying was possible because although the IBM/360 system implementation was protected by a number of patents, IBM published a description of the system's architecture (enabling the creation of competing implementations).
The Soviet Academy of Sciences, which had been a major player in Soviet computer development, could not compete with the political influence of the powerful ministries and was relegated to a monitoring role. Hardware research and development became the responsibility of research institutes attached to the ministries. By the early 1970s, with chip technology becoming increasingly relevant to defense applications, Zelenograd emerged as the center of the Soviet microprocessing industry; foreign technology designs were imported, legally or otherwise. The Ninth five-year plan approved a scaled-back version of the earlier OGAS project, and the EGSVT network, which was to link the higher echelons of planning departments and administrations. The poor quality of Soviet telephone systems impeded remote data transmission and access. The telephone system was barely adequate for voice communication, and a Western researcher deemed it unlikely that it could be significantly improved before the end of the 20th century. In 1973, Lebedev stepped down from his role as director of the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering. He was replaced by Vsevolod Burtsev, who promoted development of the Elbrus computer series. In the spirit of detente, in 1974 the Nixon administration decided to relax export restrictions on computer hardware and raised the allowed computing power to 32 million bits per second. In 1975, the Soviet Union placed an order with IBM to supply process-control and management computers for its new Kamaz truck plant. IBM systems were also purchased for Intourist to establish a computer reservation system before the 1980 Summer Olympics.
(Soviet personal computers in 1985)
Following the choice of Grigory Romanov as the next General Secretary of the CPSU and introduction of the Ryzhkov programme, the situation began to slowly but surely improve in the USSR. The Soviet industry abandoned cloning of existing Western systems and focused only development of original computer designs. Though the Soviet-built systems still lagged behind their Western counterparts, the raise in quality standarts was visible. Furthemore, the Soviet government focused on developments of personal computers, which would be made avaiable to the Soviet population. The increase of avaiability of computer systems in Soviet companies was increasing steadily throughout the 1980s. One of most important intiatives was to expand computer literacy in schools.
The Elektronika BK-0010 was the first Soviet personal computer manufactured in mass numbers. Between years 1985 and 1989 the Soviet industry produced over one million personal computers and 10 million floppy disks. The Ryzhkov programme led to a rapid proliferation of companies trading computers and hardware components. Many software cooperatives were established, employing as much as one-fifth of all Soviet programmers by 1988. The Tekhnika cooperative, created by Artyom Tarasov, managed to sell its own software to state agencies including Gossnab. IBM-compatible Soviet-made computers were introduced during the late 1980s, but their cost put them beyond the reach of Soviet households. The Poisk, released in 1989, was the most common IBM-compatible Soviet computer, which was mass-produced.
Sino-US rapprochement, a major break with previous foreign policies seeking to create a new balance of power in East Asia, greatly affected the Sino-Soviet relationship. Threatened by the potential of a crippling Soviet attack, China turned to the United States. While visiting China, American President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger worked to allay Chinese fears of a joint US-Soviet attack and instead promote ties with China that would undermine the Soviet Union. Li Danhui and Xia Yafeng argue that Mao Zedong's ideological shift toward Sino-US relations was heavily influenced by the continuing threat of the USSR. Pivoting away from military confrontation, Mao declared a policy of "opposing the Soviet Union, irrespective of ideological position." This opened the door for continued cooperation and negotiation with the United States and cooperation balancing against Soviet power in East Asia. According to historian Li Danhui, "after the Zhenbao Island Incident in March 1969, the Sino-Soviet state-to-state relationship was on the brink of war. This prompted Mao to attempt a new policy of aligning with the United States to oppose the Soviet Union."
In the midst of Sino-American reproachment in 1972, the Sino-Soviet border continued to be heavily fortified, with nearly 1 million Soviet troops, armed with tanks, airplanes, artillery and backed by ballistic missiles. The Soviet Army faced approximately 1.5 million troops consisting of the PLA and People's Militia. The border tensions increased from 1973 through 1976, as both sides sought political victories while also continuing to militarize the border. Brezhnev spoke of China's failure to accept peaceful coexistence between the two nations, while the PRC continued to view the Soviet Union as an existential threat. The presence of the Soviet Navy in the Indian and Pacific oceans as well as well-armed troops across the length of the border reinforced a view of Soviet encirclement. The death of Mao in September 1976 brought no immediate changes in the Sino-Soviet conflict, although each side had significantly reduced the number of troops stationed along the border. Brezhnev attempted to congratulate Hua Guofeng in October 1976, and was strongly rebuffed with a reinforcement of the late Chairman's anti-Soviet rhetoric. In 1976, each side had approximately 300,000 soldiers deployed on the border, while the Soviet troops were backed by airpower and strategic forces. In 1978, the Soviets began deploying SS-20 missiles throughout the Far East, allowing them to strike any target in the PRC. In addition, large military exercises were performed in both Mongolia and Siberia, specifically modelling different scenarios of a Sino-Soviet war.
The Sino-Soviet Treaty lapsed in February 1979, and Deng Xiaoping announced that China would not attempt to renew the treaty provisions. The stationing of Soviet naval vessels throughout unified Socialist Vietnam gave further evidence of Soviet attempts to encircle the PRC. The increased Soviet presence in the Gulf of Tonkin raised tensions further. In the midst of these worries, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, toppling the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge. In response, China invaded northern Vietnam on February 17, and occupied a small area for a month. Declaring that China had realized its objective of "punishing Vietnamese and Soviet hegemony," the PLA withdrew in March 1979, ending the brief third Indochina War. After China's withdrawal from Vietnam, Sino-Soviet relations remained locked in tense military confrontation along the border, while diplomatic relations remained frozen. While the Soviet Union continued to supply and support the Vietnamese government in Cambodia, China remained opposed to all Soviet involvement in Southeast Asia; the regime continued to lambaste Soviet and Vietnamese "regional hegemony." Minor skirmishes continued along the southern border with Vietnam and the northern border remained heavily militarized. Historian Péter Vámos estimates that "about one fourth of Soviet ground forces and one third of its air force were stationed along or in the region of the Sino-Soviet border" in the early 1980s. Many of these units were stationed in the nominally independent People's Republic of Mongolia, as per the 1980 Soviet-Mongolian Mutual Defense treaty. The massive troop build-up along the border into the 1980s led to an imbalance of military power; the Chinese remained overwhelmed by the Soviet show of force. Meanwhile, the Soviet treaty with Vietnam allowed Soviet troops and the use of former American naval bases along the Vietnamese coast. The presence of the Soviet Navy and Air Force in its southern neighbor further enforced the feeling of encirclement.
For China, the instability on the northern border was increasingly seen as an unnecessary threat to the regime's existence and a thorn in the side of Chinese economic reforms. According to Gilbert Rozman, the rise of Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun meant "the leftist line of opposing most post-Stalin reforms in the Soviet Union could now be replaced by appreciation for reforms in a socialist system." The post-Stalinist Soviet Union was no longer seen as a revisionist empire but instead a potential trade partner in economic reform. This ideological turn brought about a political and diplomatic shift, as China tentatively reached out to the USSR.
"Having normalized its relations with the United States, for the purpose of providing a peaceful environment, Deng also sought improved relations with the Soviet Union. The Chinese had good reasons to seek normalization with the Soviet Union. The Sino-Soviet conflict remained a destabilizing factor for China. With the border issue unsettled and Soviet military deployments in Siberia and Mongolia, the Soviet Union was perceived as the gravest threat to China’s security." - Gilbert Rozman
Getting to the negotiating table proved troublesome. In September 1979, the parties began meeting, but failed to agree on what issues should be covered. The USSR sought to focus on bilateral relations between the two nuclear powers, while the PRC was concerned with current Soviet engagements in neighboring countries, specifically Vietnam and Mongolia; the PRC remained worried about the potential of Soviet military encirclement. While the Soviet Union sought to establish bilateral diplomatic relations, for China, there were two major issues that needed to be tackled before normalization of diplomatic relations. These "obstacles" were the Soviet military deployment in Mongolia and along the PRC borders, and Soviet aid in support of Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia. China refused to begin any discussion of diplomatic or party relations until these obstacles were removed. The Soviets responded by refusing to unilaterally agree to any of the demands, instead insisting on bilateral relations first. Since neither side would negotiate, the attempts to meet stalled.
The Soviet–Afghan War ended this brief warming of Sino-Soviet relations and led to increased military cooperation between China and the United States. The growing semi-official military alliance with the United States allowed the Chinese to strike back at the Soviets. The US and PRC established joint intelligence listening posts in Manchuria to monitor the Soviet Union, and these facilities remained staffed by Chinese intelligence. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan raised tensions between the US and USSR, and provided another realm for Sino-US military cooperation. It also opened another military front on the Sino-Soviet border, and while this border was never the site of direct confrontations, the PRC was worried about the additional Soviet presence. In 1980, the US and PRC jointly opened two further listening stations in Xinjiang, specifically focused on tracking Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Furthermore, Xinjiang became the base of Chinese aid to the Mujahideen, with PLA soldiers training and providing weapons to the anti-Soviet guerillas. According to Yitzhak Shichor, "PLA personnel provided training, arms, organization, financial support, and military advisers to the Mujahideen resistance throughout nearly the entire Soviet military presence in Afghanistan, with the active assistance and cooperation of the CIA." These PLA and CIA joint training camps were located near Kashgar and Khotan, spending $200–400 million training and arming the rebels. In the wake of the invasion, China solidified its terms for establishing bilateral relations, demanding the end of Soviet military deployment in Mongolia and along PRC borders, the cessation of Soviet aid in support of Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia, and total withdrawal from Afghanistan; making a total of "three major obstacles." There was more to the Afghanistan conflict than just another front for border confrontations. Historian Péter Vámos argues that "the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which had initially seemed so threatening to China’s security, led to a change in the balance of forces between the superpowers and made the prospects of war seem more distant, partly as a result of a tacit strategic partnership between China and the United States described euphemistically as the pursuit of parallel actions." The new listening posts and cooperation between the US and PRC counter-balanced Soviet threats in the West, while the increasing quagmire of the Soviet war appeared to weaken the Soviet Army.
(Deng Xiaoping)
Deng Xiaoping pursued a policy of balance between the US and USSR. While warming relations with the US led to an informal military alliance, the PRC also sought to improve relations with the Soviets. In 1981–82, Chinese fears of Soviet encirclement and a coming war diminished; however, the desire to remove these threats remained the top priority for normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. In 1982, Leonid Brezhnev took a big step towards normalization with a speech in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR. In this speech, "the Soviet leader called China a socialist country, supported China’s position on Taiwan, expressed his willingness to improve relations with China, and proposed consultations between the two sides." Deng reacted immediately, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded saying "We paid attention to the sections concerning Sino-Soviet relations in President Brezhnev’s speech in Tashkent on March 24. We categorically refute its attacks against China. In Sino-Soviet relations and in international affairs, we attach importance to the Soviet Union’s real actions." In response, Deng sent Yu Hongliang to give the following message to the Soviet government via the PRC embassy in Moscow.
"There has been an abnormal relationship between China and the Soviet Union for many years, and the two peoples do not want to see the continuation of such a situation. Now it is time to do something to improve Sino-Soviet relations. Of course, the problems cannot be solved in one day, but the Chinese side holds that the important thing is the existence of true willingness to improve relations. It is fully possible to find a fair and reasonable solution through negotiations. The Chinese side proposes that the Soviet Union should persuade Vietnam to withdraw its troops from Cambodia as a starting point, or it is also possible to start with other problems that influence the relationship between our two countries, such as the reduction of military force in the border region. At the same time, both sides should work on finding mutually acceptable measures in order to solve the problem of withdrawal of Soviet troops from Mongolia. The Chinese side also hopes that a fair solution can be found for the Afghan issue. To sum up, only if both sides think about the prospects for the development of the relationship are willing to resume good neighborly relations between our two great countries, starting with solving one or two of the important problems, will it then be possible to open up a new phase in bilateral relations. As to the form of exchanging views, it can be done by consultations between the two sides."- Yu Hongliang
(Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping in Beijing)
Following Soviet offensive in Afghanistan coupled with bombardment campaing in Pakistan, relations between China and the USSR once again were very tense, which lead to unofficial alliance between China and the United States. Nevertheless, seeing a great potential of developing China, General Secretary Romanov send Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs
Mikhail Gorbachev to Beijing to seek an agreement with China, which could led to permament normalization of diplomatic relations between two states, as well as to draw China away from the United States.
On 11 February 1986 human rights activist
Natan Sharansky was released by Soviet authorities and leaves the country for Israel. Sharansky was born into a Jewish family on 20 January 1948 in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk) in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. His father, Boris Shcharansky, a journalist from a Zionist background who worked for an industrial journal, died in 1980, before Natan was freed. His mother, Ida Milgrom, visited him in prison and stubbornly waged a nine-year battle for her son's release from Soviet prison and labor camps. She was permitted to follow her son to Israel six months after he left the Soviet Union. Sharansky attended physics and mathematics high school No.17 in Donetsk. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. Sharansky graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996.
After Sharansky graduated from university, he began working for a secret state research laboratory. Sharansky lived near Sokolniki Park, on Kolodezniy Pereulok (Water Well Lane) in Moscow. In his spare time, Sharansky would coach young chess players at the famous chess club in the park. He took his current Hebrew name in 1986 when he was freed from Soviet incarceration as part of a prisoner exchange and received an Israeli passport with his new name. Natan Sharansky is married to Avital Sharansky and has two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. In the Soviet Union, his application to marry Avital was denied by the authorities. They were married in a friend's apartment, in a ceremony not recognized by the government, as the USSR only recognized civil marriage and not religious marriage. Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks. On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrested by the KGB, then headed by Yuri Andropov, on multiple charges, including high treason and spying for several Americans. The accusation stated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300 refuseniks, many of whom were denied exit visas because of their knowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by Robert C. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues in Denials of Jewish Visas". High treason carried the death penalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor.
Sharansky spent time in Moscow's Lefortovo Prison, followed by Vladimir and Chistopol prisons, where for part of the time he was placed in solitary confinement. His health deteriorated, to the point of endangering his life. Later he was detained in Perm 35, a post-Stalin-Gulag-type so-called "strict regimen colony" in Perm Oblast. During his imprisonment, he embarked on hunger strikes to protest confiscation of his mail, and he was force-fed at least 35 times, which he describes as "a sort of torture". Sharansky later opposed force-feeding of Palestinian detainees. Sharansky appeared in a March 1990 edition of National Geographic magazine. The article, "Last Days of the Gulag" by Mike Edwards, profiles through photographs and text one of the few remaining Soviet prison labor camps. The article featured a photo of Natan Sharansky and his wife Avital in their home in Israel viewing photos of the same Gulag where he had been imprisoned, but as it appeared in 1990. Sharansky remarked in the article that after viewing images of the prisoner's faces, he could discern that the protocol of oppression was still at work. The author also showed Sharansky a photo of the cold isolation cell where he had himself been confined. Sharansky commented with irony that conditions had improved slightly: the stark cell now featured a thin bench bolted to the middle of the floor. He said that if that bench had existed when he was there, he could have slept on it, albeit uncomfortably.
As a result of an international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky (including assistance from East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman, and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald), Sharansky was released on 11 February 1986 as part of a larger exchange of detainees. Sharansky and three low-level Western spies (Czech citizen Jaroslav Javorský and West German citizens Wolf-Georg Frohn, and Dietrich Nistroy) were exchanged for Czech spies Karl Koecher and Hana Koecher held in the United States, Soviet spy Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Polish spy Marian Zacharski, and East German spy Detlef Scharfenorth (the latter three held in West Germany). The men were released in two stages, with Sharansky freed first then whisked away, accompanied by the United States Ambassador to West Germany, Richard R. Burt. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and East Germany, which had been used before for this purpose.
(Mir space station)
On 19 February 1986 the Soviet Union launched
the Mir space station. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit. he station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space. Following the success of the Salyut programme, Mir represented the next stage in the Soviet Union's space station programme. The first module of the station, known as the core module or base block, was launched in 1986 and followed by six further modules. Proton rockets were used to launch all of its components. The station was launched as part of the Soviet Union's crewed spaceflight programme effort to maintain a long-term research outpost in space. As a result, most of the station's occupants were Soviet; through international collaborations such as the Interkosmos, Euromir and Shuttle–Mir programmes, the station was made accessible to space travellers from several Asian, European and North American nations. Mir was authorised by a 17 February 1976 decree, to design an improved model of the Salyut DOS-17K space stations. Four Salyut space stations had been launched since 1971, with three more being launched during Mir's development. It was planned that the station's core module (DOS-7 and the backup DOS-8) would be equipped with a total of four docking ports; two at either end of the station as with the Salyut stations, and an additional two ports on either side of a docking sphere at the front of the station to enable further modules to expand the station's capabilities. By August 1978, this had evolved to the final configuration of one aft port and five ports in a spherical compartment at the forward end of the station.
It was originally planned that the ports would connect to 7.5-tonne (8.3-short-ton) modules derived from the Soyuz spacecraft. These modules would have used a Soyuz propulsion module, as in Soyuz and Progress, and the descent and orbital modules would have been replaced with a long laboratory module. Following a February 1979 governmental resolution, the programme was consolidated with Vladimir Chelomei's crewed Almaz military space station programme. The docking ports were reinforced to accommodate 20-tonne (22-short-ton) space station modules based on the TKS spacecraft. NPO Energia was responsible for the overall space station, with work subcontracted to KB Salyut, due to ongoing work on the Energia rocket and Salyut 7, Soyuz-T, and Progress spacecraft. KB Salyut began work in 1979, and drawings were released in 1982 and 1983. New systems incorporated into the station included the Salyut 5B digital flight control computer and gyrodyne flywheels (taken from Almaz), Kurs automatic rendezvous system, Luch satellite communications system, Elektron oxygen generators, and Vozdukh carbon dioxide scrubbers. By early 1984, work on Mir had halted while all resources were being put into the Buran programme in order to prepare the Buran spacecraft for flight testing. Funding resumed in early 1984 when Valentin Glushko was ordered by the Central Committee's Secretary for Space and Defence to orbit Mir by early 1986, in time for the 27th Communist Party Congress. It was clear that the planned processing flow could not be followed and still meet the 1986 launch date. It was decided on Cosmonaut's Day (12 April) 1985 to ship the flight model of the base block to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and conduct the systems testing and integration there. The module arrived at the launch site on 6 May, with 1100 of 2500 cables requiring rework based on the results of tests to the ground test model at Khrunichev. In October, the base block was rolled outside its cleanroom to carry out communications tests. The first launch attempt on 16 February 1986 was scrubbed when the spacecraft communications failed, but the second launch attempt, on 19 February 1986 at 21:28:23 UTC, was successful, meeting the political deadline.
On March 13, 1986,
the American cruiser USS Yorktown and the destroyer USS Caron tried to exercise the right of innocent passage under international law through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea near the southern Crimean Peninsula. They were confronted by Soviet frigate Ladny and border guard vessels Dozorny and Izmail. Yorktown and Caron stayed in Soviet territorial waters for roughly two hours. The situation de-escalated when the U.S. ships left; diplomatic repercussions continued for several weeks. "The Rules of Navigation and Sojourn of Foreign Warships in the Territorial Waters and Internal Waters and Ports of the USSR", enacted by the Soviet Council of Ministers in 1983, acknowledged the right of innocent passage of foreign warships only in restricted areas of Soviet territorial waters in the Baltic, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. There were no sea lanes for innocent passage in the Black Sea. The United States, starting from 1979, conducted a freedom of navigation program as the U.S. government believed that many countries were beginning to assert jurisdictional boundaries that far exceeded traditional claims. The program was implemented because diplomatic protests seemed ineffective. The U.S. actions in the Black Sea were challenged by the Soviet Union several times prior to the 1986 incident, particularly on December 9, 1968, August 1979 and on February 18, 1984.
At the time, the Soviet Union recognized the right of innocent passage for warships in its territorial waters solely in designated sea lanes. The United States believed that there was no legal basis for a coastal nation to limit warship transits to sea lanes only. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of State found that the Russian-language text of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 22, paragraph 1 allowed the coastal state to regulate the right of innocent passage whenever necessary, while the English-language text did not. On March 10, 1986, the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Yorktown, accompanied by the Spruance-class destroyer USS Caron, entered the Black Sea via the Turkish Straits.Their entrance was observed by a Krivak-class frigate, Ladny, which was ordered to continue observation. On March 13, Yorktown and Caron entered the Soviet territorial waters and sailed west along the southern Crimean Peninsula, approaching within 6 nautical miles (11 km) of the coast. Having entered from the direction of Feodosia, the US warships sailed for two hours and 21 minutes. Both American warships also confronted the Soviet border guard vessels Dozorny and Izmail. The commander of Ladny, Captain Zhuravlev, reported the incident to his superiors.
The Soviet state-run Izvestiya editor Vyacheslav Lukashin claimed that "at the time of the incident the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy Vladimir Chernavin knew that the order for the U.S. warships to proceed into Soviet waters was given by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger with the consent of President Ronald Reagan."